#knowingthemanipulator

[lilaetleloup]

manipulators and the "elite"

The two greatest talents of manipulators are their acting and psychological abilities. And it's also the reason why they are so dangerous.

Because most of us will imagine the bad guy as someone overtly nasty. Preferably ugly, with greasy hair. When, in fact, it's all the contrary.

The more powerful evil is, the more enticing he will seem. The more fascinating he will look. The more charismatic he'll be.

He'll polish his appearance to the best of the possibilities offered to him by medicine, make-up and sport. He'll deliver your dream on a golden tray, you just won't believe your eyes. Your so far dull life will suddenly bloom with hope and colours. You will be dazzled.

This feeling the world suddenly sparkles is called gas-lighting, and it’s intentional to hook you. It can feel like you are falling in love, on a cloud, breathing pure oxygen... until the illusion disappears. And then, you'll feel like this cartoon coyote, running after the big bird and discovering himself above an abyss.

You are an anti-abortion Christian? What a coincidence, he is too. You are an advocate for ecology and social rights? Marvellous, so is she. The manipulator has no conviction, other that he deserves everything. And it could be the same person who, years later, will present completely different views, adapting to his goals. He'll tell you he has changed. Or that he has grown up. When growing up and changing is impossible to him. He would have to be able to question himself first...

Your eyes full of stars, your dream in the flesh in front of you, it will be nearly impossible then for you to see the hard truth about the person who cynically targeted you.

And this acute sense of psychology allows the manipulator to be a talented writer.

He will know best how to describe a character's personality. Notably villains. And when before the year 2000, when psychology wasn't so precise or known about narcissistic traits, you feel like the writer has read in the head of a psychopath, wonder no more: he found the inspiration in his own head.

The bad guy is mostly what makes a movie or a book interesting, what gives the hero the possibility to learn and be a better person. As my daughter told me once, when we had fun imagining a planet whose inhabitant were only good people, the one advantage of villains, is that they make fiction interesting.

But I'm nonetheless appalled when I read now the eyes of so many writers of romantic books and identify them for what they are: soulless. Above a magnificent cold smile. Writers of love story who don't even know how love feels? That's laughable and could also explain so many cliches you don't find in real life. And I'm quite offended these authors participated in the forming of my young romantic mind, fulling my head with dangerous expectations.

It's my conviction, now, that a majority of books and screenplay writers are manipulators.

And as we stay on the psychological ability, a good portion of psychiatrists psychologists or other psy...s must be too...

And its the same thing for actors: positive people are a minority there.

A good manipulator, especially a psychopath, will know how to perform to a level you just can't imagine. When he has no empathy, he'll seem compassionate. When he hates you, he'll look as if he cares.

A psychopath knows how to wear a daily mask that will seldom slip. You'll have to know him backstage, to see his meltdowns, to watch the volcanic explosions. The psychopath will be his true self in front of those he already has in his power, when no effort is needed. Or when the illusion wears him down.

The manipulator is already an actor. So doing it professionally is just the next logical step.

If he is successful, he'll have the people's admiration, undiluted narcissistic pleasure that will stroke his ego and save him from too frequent rages.

It's all the easier as a manipulator knows how to light the charisma on. This impression, when you meet him that he fills the whole place and sucks the air? He'll be happy with "just" your time, your attention and all your energy. The beast needs the fuel.

And for a talented manipulator without the good looks, the next best choice is to become a politician.

Without any real conviction, he'll choose the most opportunistic program, will make the show and seduce the public.

Of course, manipulators feel also at home with all jobs that have them manipulate people, like marketing or public relations.

And in anything focusing on appearances, without substance. As he lacks a heart and its depth, he'll work on the surface. It's something he has learned to do since he was a child.

So he'll flourish happily on social media, fashion, modelling, merchandising...

And then, his rage, his lack of scruples, his blind ambition and his political flair - walk on naive people, flatter the powerful, exploit the weak - will enable him to climb fairly quickly the hierarchical ladder of any company.

All the more as you have this to take into account: the manipulators know who they are and what their survival entails. Only the selfish, low level negatives, and the positive people don't encompass this human reality. And, mostly, don't know how to identify a predator.

The manipulators know perfectly how to do so. And at the highest levels of power, where they don't need the useful good and naive person, villains associations abound, that will allow only their kind on the pyramid summit.

That's the reason why you don't need to imagine some Illuminati conspiracy theory. They already have Davos, masonic or golf clubs. Or VIP spaces, cocktails, weddings...

And when you put all this put together, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that at least three fourth of what tabloids call the "elite", are in fact predators only interested in their power and concentrated on their greed.

And we wonder the world is not going as well as it should? They have moulded it in their image, superficial and empty. And this world depresses so much the good sensitive people, those with a soul, that the suicide rates or alcoholism or use of legal and illegal drugs have been skyrocketing. The same with what we call "mental illness". When a good portion of them comes from the difficulty people with the full span of human emotions have to adapt to this world of spoiled, heartless, rotten children.

The true mentally-ill person is the manipulator.

And he has made the "elite" in his image.

Upper-class people who haven't changed since Jane Austen, and have seen the world evolve in spite of  them. When they didn't see anything wrong in letting children die in their chimneys to clean them. And if the morals hadn't changed under the pressure of good people, the modern version of upper-class wouldn't see any problem with it.

There are more manipulators in power but, in democratic countries, there are more good people in general.

This has them make marketing efforts to look as if they care.

Let's continue to change the mentalities in a positive way.

And let's take the power back.

[lilaetleloup]

the signs that point to a manipulator VI

24. he brings you down

For the pleasure, to have you in his power, to feed his fragile ego and to get from you the emotions he’ll use to feed himself or discredit you.

And also because, well, the manipulator secretly hates you: you have a heart and he hates you for it.

It can be difficult to differentiate between systemic depreciation and valid criticism.

Because everyone can be critical. And sometimes it’s warranted.

How then, can you know the difference ?

Quite simply: you have to ask yourself how you feel.

If you feel bad, that you lose progressively the trust you have in yourself, that you feel like a failure, never encouraged to do something or be yourself... you may have been under too much targeted criticism.

And the true danger is that in living this alternative reality when you are constantly hit while he presents himself as the victim, you can end up doubting of yourself, of your own perceptions, your cleverness and your equilibrium.

Furthermore, one of his classic attack is to say you’re loosing the plot or your mind. That you’re inventing stuff, lying, imagining things, are hysterical, should calm down, are batshit crazy...

The easiest way to send the problem back in your turf as quickly as he possibly can.

And you can come to the point where you wonder if indeed you are still mentally sane.

If this happens, he’ll use it against you.

And will relish telling the world he was right all along.

25. special attention on the passive-aggressive

It’s a two time movement.

The manipulator will attack you verbally, without reason, preferably with innuendos you’ll be the only one to understand. This is the aggressive part.

The ideal is for you to react but for other people around, if there are, to not perceive the intensity of the attack. And therefore to not understand your logical reaction and think YOU are the aggressor.

Because once the aggressive part has been dealt, the manipulator will protect himself behind his victim mask, giving you the role of the bad guy. This is the passive part.

It’s the bully who hits you and then puts his false glasses on. You won’t be so mean that you’d hit someone with glasses, will you?

#bekind

The two movement can be in the opposite order when the manipulator will preemptively present you as the bad guy before going to your throat.

It can look like this: “You aren’t a nice person, you should be kinder, you ugly son of a bleep, selfish, jealous looser, get a life!”

Yes, I know, written like that it seems to be a caricature but just give a second look at the many comments on social media...

Because the manipulator, as I wrote before, can’t bear criticism and will, if submitted to one, bury you under recriminations, blaming you – the irony! - for not being kind.

Criticism is useful when it’s constructive or when there is a manipulator at the receiving end.

You shouldn’t let him be destructive without reacting. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the recent #bekind movement has partly been launched by one or more manipulators: it’s a virtual pair of glasses.

When they get low, he won’t let you go high, though: the manipulator will take it as encouragement and attack you until he hits the mark. He wants to prove you’re bad and meanwhile he can have fun. Pure happiness.

26. he doesn’t want your happiness

At all.

Without a heart, he can’t be happy and can only feed on you or on crowds.  Or know pleasure, this substitute promised to those who abdicated their conscience.

Your happiness is an insult to him.

He can’t bear it.

And then his ego whispers in his head that you have everything HE deserves. That you are robbing him. That you had everything easily when he’s slaving. That it’s soooooooo not fair.

He’s eaten by jealousy, bitterness, envy and hate.

If life hasn’t given him what he is sure he deserves, it’s because you have his job, especially if you are an immigrant. If you are happily married, it’s because you have his spouse. Or the kids she was supposed to give birth to. The money that should be in his pocket. His oxygen...

And he will try to kill your happiness.

27. you don’t feel good

You are depreciated, criticized, attacked, nothing you do is good enough and it’s always your fault.

Your emotions are dismissed, you are not respected.

And after the first love-bombing months, and the subsequent episodes he hopes briefer and briefer when he makes an effort to keep his hold on you, he will do everything in his power to have you feel unhappy.

If this wasn’t enough, the manipulator is an energy vampire.

And I would guess, an inspiration for the bloody one.

Energy is another vital force and as a Reiki master, I should know how important it is to your well-being.

If you live with a intense manipulator, you can feel drained, without enthusiasm, without desire, sad without cause, exhausted without knowing why, and sometimes without any more forces to resist.

The more toxic the manipulator, the more intense the symptoms.

Is the manipulator is only a low range narcissist, you could spend an entire life being slowly eroded,  sustaining him, trying unsuccessfully to please him: daily Sisyphus running behind your stone.

Some manipulators have taken the extra measure to isolate you.

And as you are alone, you feel worse and worse. It can raise to the physical level: you are more easily ill, you gain weight, loose hair...

In some cases, you can go through apathy periods. When you don’t even have the strength to get out of bed. It isn’t necessarily a depression, sometimes getting you out of the talons of the toxic person, can be enough for you to recover.

But it can get you to a true depression.

The manipulator won’t have any compassion for you and will take advantage, again and again, of your vulnerability.

Everything is in his interest and against you.

(to be continued...)

[lilaetleloup]

the manipulator during the epidemic

I wrote an article I have not yet published that explains how good guys underestimate the amount of bad guys. And that bad people reveal themselves a lot more in times of crisis. I thought about wars or revolutions. But the current crisis is also accurate.

My estimation, based on books, observation, logic, history and, dare I confess, clairvoyance, is that there are around 35% of negative people in most democracies, the countries where we are less traumatized and thus, not pushed into survival mode.

In non-democratic countries, where this survival instinct has been activated, it has also the side effect to have people put the best of humanity aside, compassion and love, and it's my belief that in Russia and China, for example, the positive citizens are a minority. And it must be hell for a person with empathy, I feel, to live there.

Among this negative people, there are roughly 30% of selfish persons, who do not manipulate and can still have some conscience wake-up calls, 40% of narcissists who are manipulators without conscience but less Machiavellian cleverness than the other 30% of psychopaths or sociopaths. And this is to bring back to the total. In any given democracy, it means there would be roughly 10% of psychopaths.

And in peace time, this little world of egotistical people is more or less hiding behind the social norm of our "modern" times. But when there is a crisis, they clearly enjoy being themselves.

It could have been arrogance or it could have been a tough childhood that had the manipulator cut himself form a good part of his emotions. Notably the best part: at the bottom of his Pandora box, there is only pleasure left.

And with this spectrum of emotions which has him feel more like a stone than a human, it will be so much easier for him to adapt to social distancing - doesn't know anguish, nor depression - and to boast, from this "moral" point of view, that it's very easy to cope with the stuff, that you "just" have to lounge on a couch, or "just" have to watch TV.

And when, on Instagram, some people expect followers to admire their example, telling them that you "just" have to push on your internal happiness switch, as if we were all just clocks, I would bet a lot, that they are manipulators. And more so when this advice is written under a selfie.

The manipulator doesn't fear much but he fears being discovered, getting old, getting sick and death.

Not for those he loves, of course, he loves nobody but himself. Or yes, sometimes, those he sees as a projection of himself. His survival is essential to him, it may have been the reason he chose to cut himself from emotions. I do not mean here, that we, positive people, have reached a Buddhist detachment but that we are able to take risks for others and believe in something or someone more important than we are. For the manipulator, his own end is the end of the world. And the spectre of this Coronavirus has him lash out; anger is one of the emotions he has left. I'm  not surprised, then, when I read that conjugal violence is rising. As do divorces. And racial crimes.

Some negative people, in France, will harass medical staff, putting messages in mailboxes, asking nurses to think about their health - the nerve! - and move. Some owners will even put an end to rental contracts without notice. And I dare say it's not even legal.

Without a spouse or a scapegoat, you can always lash out on Twitter or from a window. Lynching and stoning is a group pleasure no negative person could refuse. And social media, in our “civilized” times is quite as good as the real thing. "Stay home" will he shout without bothering to know what the purpose of the walk is. The good old mask of virtue and common good allows some to express anger and hate with impunity.

The solitary walk in a forest is, it would seem, after the masturbation, the least dangerous activity in these dangerous times and it has been, within limits, authorized in France. And this hasn't prevented some, there, on Twitter, to clutch their pearls and threaten to shoot the walker. I even saw a picture of a tarpaulin under which the would-be-murderer claimed he wished to put his future victims. Murdering someone or talking about it, in the name of an hypothetical common good, in general, is a good indication of hypocrisy or manipulation. Torquemada comes to mind, who, in his own time, would have had the reputation of a saint, taking care of others’ souls, while enjoying the legal torture. Or Robespierre, claiming that in the name or purity and the good of a whole country, he was ready to behead half of it. And would have done so if he hadn't succumbed to his own tool first.

And it will be the same profile, and even the same person, who will walk his dog ten times a day or rent one, still clothed with the same respectability cloak, because in this case, you use the basis of the law, if not the spirit.

There is also some anger that can at least express itself in some French regions when they slash tires or damage the paint of cars that seem to come from other counties, worst of all... from Paris! They can at last show what they really think about the loathsome Parisian. And certainly, some people who have run to their secondary house when travelling was forbidden and they knew the consequences on the local community, may have been negative people. But it was not necessarily the case of those who had this reflex at the beginning of everything when they had no apparent symptoms. If I had been living in a flat at the time, in the absence of rules and thorough information on the matter, honestly, I don't know what I would have done. And the good people who indiscriminately damage others' cars (one local doctor whom it happened to, had a borrowed car with a "foreign" license plate ) should think that they should take care of their reputation. Because it would have an impact on tourism and their future prosperity.

When, in front of the crisis, and in the absence of any possible panic attack, so many citizens are hoarding toilet paper or disinfectant, hurting others who will have none, this lack of solidarity, this selfishness can also be the sign of someone being negative. Some go farther still, selling this stock at higher price: taking advantage of chaos and others is so manipulator 101.

In the united States, we have the selfishness and narcissism of young people who don't want to skip Spring Break and party on the beach before coming home and redistributing generously the virus among their families. The youngest among us are also those with the less symptoms and I hope they'll think twice before kissing their grand-mother. As, in a recent post, I spoke about this possible tendency, for older persons, to worry more and feel bitterness, I can as well have all generations hate me, telling that there are negative people of all ages.

And freedom, this right this country holds dear shouldn't be a right to be selfish.

Because those of us with a conscience know that our freedom stops where the others' begins.

We witness also, in the same country, the most extraordinary protests of negative people: a collective of Trump fans who protest in compact groups during a pandemic, against the closing of shops and stay at home orders. In the name of extreme individual freedom, the one that has no respect whatsoever for others' and is just selfishness in disguise. What I find interesting is that what I've seen written the most on their placards, is a demand to go to the hairdresser, which is plain shameless narcissism. The faces are scary masks of hatred and anger, the talk without any empathy, nor ambiguity: "these people will die anyway". No matter the number of deaths among others, as long as I can have my my my haircut. A speedy class on the sense of priority of negative people.

The most odious is when these people harass or insult medical staff that work day and night to save others, risking their mental and physical health. So, of course, there are also negative people among the medical staff, - I've been raised among them, I should know - but I can't imagine the anguish and sadness for the positive ones among them who work to save others. The horror.

The manipulator, the negative one, reveals himself in time of crisis.

And I think about my fellow good people who take risks to help others, without judging or condemning those who wouldn't be as exceptional. For example, this doctors who will maybe have to cure some of these protesters with nice haircuts who spit on them the previous day.

I think about my fellow empaths who, as well as having to fight against their own stress and fear, will be enclosed with a negative person focused on draining their energy. Who will suck them, and unload on them and generally show the whole range of his toxicity off.

The only good side of this is to have to toxic ones reveal themselves. Also their values and influence on a world and a destructive economy.

And when the worst will have gone, they will have learned nothing and won't have changed.

We will have to be the ones to learn from it and fix the mess.

[lilaetleloup]

the signs that point to a manipulator V

19. he is cut from a large part of his emotions.

He doesn’t know love, nor happiness: he has no quality attributed to the heart. The only positive emotion he knows, it’s pleasure. Most notably the pleasure of winning: money, energy, influence, power, your attention. And he is always running after it.

And so we find ourselves in he Troll movie, with the big bad Bergens who, in order to have an agreeable moment, think they have no other solution but to eat a happy Troll.

Because as I said in the precedent article, his main emotion is anger. And it cuts him from every others. The manipulator doesn’t face his emotions, he flees them. He is basically a coward.

20. he doesn’t like to give

His ego is always whispering he deserves everything.  So when the manipulator gives, it’s to receive more in the bargain or to build his charitable image.

As one of the members of my family said: “generosity is just well thought selfishness”.

When the manipulator gives, he thinks he deserves effusive thanks and, if at all possible, a visible display of his gift.

21. he doesn’t like physical contact...

... unless it’s used to brand you and mark his power. Or for his personal pleasure. And there are all kind of gestures he will use to control you: his hand on your back to make you feel inferior, your hand he will grab and keep in his space to prevent you from escaping, the punishing handshake to show you who is boss...

He doesn’t like touching to give affection because he doesn’t like to give. And he doesn’t like loosing his grasp on control.

Sometimes, sadly, if his mass-scale manipulative job requires it and he must seem to care, he will force himself to do as he’s supposed to: hands displayed just so, eyes closed, big smile, white teeth. A less careful narcissist will be seen kissing the air or pretend touching his kid for a photograph when in fact, his hand is staying prudently away from the surface.

In bed, it can give a variety of consequences, from asexuality to 50 nuances of Grey. To love pleasure but to run from affection has manipulators looking for a delicate sex balance. Some will rape or enjoy sexual harassment, fully embracing their predatory nature.

And sometimes, at last, he has learned to be a good lover as another weapon to hunt you down.

22. he knows how to get your love

They all know how to be loved. You should never underestimate him. But it’s always puzzling for those who know the victim: how can it be he doesn’t see? Why doesn’t he realize he’s bamboozled?

The gas-lighted victim will answer something like “you don’t know him like I do” with a sprinkle of “he has excuses, he has had a difficult childhood/marriage/something.” And it’s true the victim won’t have seen the manipulator under the same light  as his kin.

Because the manipulator uses his poisonous charm on a selected few. And for a limited period.

The victim will have thus the impression to know a totally different person than the one others describe, when they try to save him. And the victim believes he knows best because he thinks he has had access to the manipulator’s intimate self. In reality, the victim is fooled: the one under which charm he has fallen, lover, wife, friend, politician, guru... isn’t real.  It’s an illusion created to seduce him. And this is, by far, the most difficult to let go. Because this illusion has been invented especially for you, for what you miss in life, for your traumatism, your faults, your dreams, your needs, your wishes and your fantasies.

The manipulator won’t always keep this illusion alive. He can’t. And even if he could, he wouldn't. He won’t make more efforts than necessary and will let the illusion progressively disappear. But the victim, dazzled by his dream in the flesh, has already committed emotionally. Or more: he can have married his manipulator, have had children with him, let his previous life go, lost his financial autonomy or his friends...

And so, in love of an illusive star or stuck in the swamp, the victim will find more and more excuses to his torturer, find justifications. And become in the deed, the accomplice of his own ordeal.

23. the more toxic the more charisma

Because it’s fairly known you don’t attract flies with vinegar. And you are the fly.

I believe in love at first sight, first and foremost when there is a manipulator involved. And it could seem a paradox, that a person I describe lacking in personality could also be so seductive. It’s because charisma doesn’t depend on personality but depends on some very clear and definite tricks: an apparent self-confidence (in fact, no shame which allows him to dare anything, lots of arrogance and self-love), this way he has to savour life and the energy of those around, and an everlasting narcissism that has him play a role to get anyone’s attention. If all that weren’t enough, some can turn an internal switch and project some kind of electric energy.

The human energy exists, the manipulator knows it.

As his total lack of conscience, his ambition and rage may have propelled him to the highest levels of money and power, we have here a classic potent aphrodisiac. And a romantic cliche à la “Pretty Woman”.

I’ve recently seen on social media, this sentence, meant to be motivational, I guess, and which could be the perfect motto of manipulators: “There is the lamp and there is the butterfly. I choose to be the lamp.”

Knowing the poor insect will, in the best case scenario, loose his time flying around an illusion, and, in the worst case, been consumed on it, you get the idea...

You can’t be too careful of neon lights.

(to be continued...)

[lilaetleloup]

when they go low, we go high?

Well, I’m afraid I have to disagree and Mister Trump is living proof it doesn’t always work. When he goes low and you go high, he takes advantage to dig deeper. And deeper and deeper.

To me, this maxim which evokes the distance and scorn an aristocrat would have toward the peasant, has absolutely no impact on an intense narcissist: he couldn’t care less about decorum and your disdain. “You can shoot first, gentlemen�� said the French army to the British one at the Fontenoy battle in 1745. But this kind of attitude only makes sense if everybody values honour the same way.

In the 1930’s, when the British and the French governments seemed to share the same naivety or cowardice, postponing their response to Hitler, he took advantage to invade Poland.

A narcissistic manipulator is like a child: without firm limits, he’ll always go further. And if the adult in charge behaves as if nothing happened, it’s going to be party time. On the contrary, a responsible intervention is needed. And the sooner the better. The farther the “adult in charge”- government, people, senate – lets the narcissist go, the more he will settle in his errors, the more he will dare, the harder it will be to “drain the swamp”.

And when I talk about intervention, I don’t talk about a pained remonstrance or a measured plea to repair. The narcissist has no heart and no conscience and doesn’t care at all if he disappointed you. And if the measure of your response has him calculate that it’s still beneficial for him to misbehave... well he’ll do it again and pay the tax. When I talk about intervention, I talk about a punitive action heavy enough to discourage.

With a narcissist or a bully, get high won’t serve you. He’ll push you, pull you, insult you, throw mud or stones till you react. A good person has an innate aversion to war and conflict. But if she has been chosen as the target of a person with a twisted ego, and if taking some distance is impossible, for example in the case of a parent or a president, this person has no other choice but to fight. And to fight at the earliest possible moment, before the bully takes strength of his first victories. And to fight to win.

There are some circumstances when you can’t stay in the comfort of your ivory tower, notably when the looters attack the castle’s walls with mortar. You have to fight on the ground.

Floating high, in this case, would be leaving the battle field to the manipulator. And he’ll enjoy the advantage with glee.

It’s the risk some republican senators have taken, unwilling to impeach Mister Trump: the lesson he’ll keep of this is that he has now full impunity to do whatever he wishes. That the misdeed was well worth the lenient fine.

So let’s collectively hope and pray he won’t invade Poland...

[lilaetleloup]

the signs that point to a manipulator II

5. he doesn’t cope well with criticism

At all. He loves himself and you have to love him too. Absolutely. Without any reserve. The tiniest whiff of a criticism will be met by veiled hostility or better yet, if he can afford it, total war.

To a manipulator the Pope isn’t the only one to be infallible.

6. he doesn’t take any responsibility

And this goes with the precedent trait as whipped cream matches with strawberries. The narcissist is never responsible for anything. It’s always someone else’s fault. Therefore, you don’t have the right to criticize him. Or to judge him, lèse-majesté crime that should be punished as before, with whipping and no cream.

The ego, again, protects its human from any psychological emotion that would have him suffer or would weaken him when he’s fighting in the mud. Responsibility could lead to doubt and sense of culpability. Which in turn could have you feel bad and hesitate before hitting the adversary. No way!

Taking responsibility for our actions is what enables us, generous people, to admit to our mistakes and get better in the process. No worry then: the manipulator is already perfect.

7. he acts or speaks in bad faith

Consequence of the previous point. And to the manipulator, it’s a tennis game to hit the ball back in the other’s field. It’s also pure dialectic, this oratory art that seems to be too much appreciated in politics. And is not so complicated, it would seem, as it is routinely used by kids under six who can argue till they lack breath or get what they wish.

To win an point doesn’t mean you are right.

If, on the contrary, you are a good guy and speak in good faith, it’s an exercise in management of frustration to try to have a reasonable argument with a manipulator when he’s wrong. Which he is, most of the time.

He’ll never admit to anything, will attack and hit you back. Where he knows it will hurt. To him, it’s a duel, a verbal joust.

If you finally explode and get angry, all the better. You go direct to the 13. case, on which I will expand later on: he is the victim, you are obviously hysterical.

8. relativism and whataboutism

No good person is perfect. He/she will have his/her faults, past, traumatisms. And make mistakes. But a good guy has mostly good intentions. And will try to improve.

In the other team, the manipulators has no good intention for others, as he deserves everything. But the mask he gets to wear has him do nice things. Sigh, what you have to do to earn your bread and your daily fix of admiration...

Good guys will act wrongly and bad guys will invest in generosity and humanitarian organizations to perfect their image.

It doesn’t change anything to the person’s essence, which shows in the intention: evil is evil whatever the mask and causes inevitable damages.

But it sure proves handy for the manipulator who will use relativism to get out of some difficult situations. When he is, for example – horror of horrors – criticized. And it looks like that: “Nobody is perfect.” “We are all sinners. Don’t throw stones.” “And whatabout him, who said this? Whatabout her, who has done that?”

9. he lies and lies and lies

Above anything you can imagine. He doesn’t simply lie, he reinvents truth. And I wrote about this in a previous article.

10. he projects

It’s one of the “bad faith” characteristics: his fragile ego and emotional immaturity won’t have him take any responsibility and will stick his own faults on you. He is incapable of shouldering them, anyway.

What he holds against you? It’s what he is.

(to be continued...)